


That Thin Atmosphere

by TiamatsChild



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam dreams about wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Thin Atmosphere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Guinevak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guinevak/gifts).



> Written for hc_bingo at Dreamwidth, for the square “wings.” A birthday present for Guinevak, who, when I mentioned it to her while brainstorming, suggested some elaborations on the prompt, and sent the story this direction. Happy birthday!

Sometimes, when Sam dreamed, the wings were a part of his body. Vast and dark and vulturine with deep slots between his pinons making a soft outline in the air. Built for soaring, circling flight, in the air for hundreds of miles, hours on hours, searching and waiting, a watcher on the wind. 

A watcher, but not a predator or a scavenger, _Argentavis magnificens_ wingspan or no – he was up there, as he was always up there, to help. To offer succor, to come down again, to work. To be a guide or a nurse, to render aid. 

Soft and deep dreams, sometimes, with a sun that took up the entire world. It was only the image that reoccured, the wings alive and responsive and shaped so differently from his real ones. Every nerve alight and wind to move the feathers. Or the feathers to move the wind and - 

The hand that clamped around his ankle and dragged him down was familiar, every movement of it as it dug into that vulnerable space of his body, mostly skin and tendon and muscle, very little cushioning fat. It _hurt_. It was _fast_ , so fast he reacted wrong, tried to get away by going up instead of trying to pull to the side or kick his captor in the hand or the face or - 

Another hand caught his shoulder, caught his _wing_ and this time he felt it, heard the organic snap and crack and almost lost himself in the bursting pulse of white cold pain.

And then he was only up there to fall.

 

Sometimes Sam wished he was the sort of person who could startle awake from a nightmare. He was not. Nightmares made Sam muggy. They bore him back down into an uncomfortable hazy state that might or might not be populated by dreams, but was certainly never restful. 

When he woke the nightmare was still there, uncomfortably crisp, waiting for him.

 

Harsh, electric white light lit the highway and the interior of the inconspicuous beater Steve had paid a lump sum for in patches, sliding backward. Sam blinked, disoriented, unable to shake for a moment that feeling of falling _back_. Up and down were confused. He blinked. Shook his head. Blinked again. There was nothing much to see but high voltage street lights and guard walls, but at least now he knew which way was up and which way down. 

“Where are we?” he asked Steve. 

Steve's gaze flickered off the empty road for a moment. “Just outside of Omaha, Nebraska,” he said. “Hello again.”

“Hello,” Sam said, and sat up, adjusting his seat to follow him. “Pretty deserted out here. I guess three thirty in the morning's downtime.”

“We did pass some big rigs just before you woke up,” Steve told him, “but big rigs are about all I've seen for hours.” 

“Anywhere we can stop?” Sam asked. “I'll spell you.”

“Sign said there's a rest stop in a few miles,” Steve said. “Once we're through the city.”

 

The rest stop had diagrams of Nebraska's navigable waterways inlaid in the floor and vending machines in a back corridor.

“This,” said Steve, “is some impressively bad coffee. And I say this as a survivor of both the Depression and the Army PX.”

“It's not so bad if you mix it with the hot chocolate,” Sam said. “Though that's terrible on its own too.” 

“You have a lot of experience with dispenser coffee?” Steve asked. 

“There was one at my college campus,” Sam said. “In the building where they had all the premed classes, and of course when it was blizzarding like you wouldn't believe it turned into a real trek to get to the nearest spot where you could get your coffee brewed by a human, and even if you _made_ it back – ”

“I'm sure vanishing in the storm was a hazard,” Steve said.

“I wouldn't think I'd have to tell a man who spent the winter of Forty Four in France about white out conditions – anyhow, even if you made it back, that coffee would have gone stone cold by the time class started. So I learned to game the dispenser.” 

“And I reap the benefits,” Steve said, and lifted his travel mug to Sam in salute.

Sam tapped Steve's mug gently with the lip of his own – an undramatic 'tonk', rather than the ring of glass or the satisfying click of ceramic, but it was, after all, a Department of Transportation rest stop in Nebraska. There might be something quietly inspiring about it, in its context as part of a chain of public works spanning a continent, linking travelers safely from one town to the next, providing a place to eat, take shelter, communicate over phone lines or the internet, but it didn't, in its physical presence, precisely stir deep spiritual feelings or suggest the pursuit of glory. Travel mugs were about the right speed. 

“It's cold in here,” Sam said. “Wanna head back out?”

“Lord, yes.” Steve shuddered. “Air conditioning is something I _like_ about the future, but I gotta say, this is maybe a bit overboard.”

“Hey, I'm not arguing.”

 

Outside was full of oblique light from the floodlights designed and angled to light the pathways and highlight the central building without interfering with visibility on the nearby highway. The air was thick and wet even now, well before sunrise, late midwestern summer with its heat and moisture the reason for the overenthusiastic chill inside. Sam scuffed his feet against the pavement just to feel the drag and catch of the rough cement against his sneakers. A part of him still felt he needed to give Steve more space between them, breathing room for nonexistent wings. Steve, not sharing his phantom awareness of an absent body part that had never in fact been a body part, caught and matched his stride and gently bumped into his shoulder, a friendly sideways nudge.

“You okay?” Steve asked. 

“I take it back,” Sam said. “Even mixed with the chocolate, this is still _vile_.” Steve returned Sam's little smirk, but the way he looked into Sam's face was still utterly earnest and still somewhere under the amusement. Sam let himself take a long deep breath in and let it out again, as slow and measured. “Yeah, not so much. Bad dream, and I don't shake those easy.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Sam considered that. The way Steve asked made it a real question, and real questions deserved real answers. He considered it all the way down the path, along the sidewalk to where they'd parked the car.

“I started dreaming that the wings were a part of me pretty soon after I started training with them,” he said finally. “I guess now I've lost them, it's not surprising I'd dream about that too.” 

The light from the highway made the sky glow at the horizon, and the street lamp turned the sidewalk a sulfurous yellow under their feet. Steve reached out for him with his empty hand, catching his shoulder, sliding his arm around Sam's back until his hand rested on Sam's spine in a clenched fist. Sam went willingly, moving into the one handed hug, letting Steve rest his forehead on his shoulder. 

“Sorry,” Steve said. Sam hoped he wasn't about to apologize over Barnes. It wasn't even about Barnes. It wasn't Barnes' fault. “That sounds bad,” Steve finished, and Sam felt that tension go. 

“Yeah,” he said, surprised at the hoarse depth of his own voice, surprised at the prickle of salt at the corner of his eyes, surprised as something unraveled inside him, a knot he hadn't fully known had taken up residence in the pit of his stomach loosening. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”


End file.
